About Us
Southerly is Australia’s oldest literary journal. The journal of the English Association, Sydney, it was launched in 1939 with works by authors such as AD Hope and Kylie Tennant. It was, from the outset, dedicated to publishing new Australian literature of the highest standard, and of providing a link between the academy and the garret.
Southerly continues to publish the best in new fiction and poetry, reviews and criticism, from and about Australian and New Zealand authors.
Southerly is published both in print and digitally, and is complemented by a free online section, The Long Paddock. Our entire backlist is available online through the Informit Literature and Culture Collection. Our blog provides commentary and bibliophilic musings from Australia’s best writers. Barribugu (meaning ‘future’ in the Dharug language) publishes new work by student writers in Australian schools.
Dr Roanna Gonsalves, Editor
Roanna Gonsalves is an award-winning writer and educator with an interdisciplinary practice. Roanna is a recipient of a NSW Premier’s Literary Award for her collection of short fiction The Permanent Resident (UWAP, 2016) as well as of the UNSW Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Endeavour Award. She has been an invited Keynote Speaker, Chair and panellist at literary events across Australia and internationally. She has been teaching, supervising and mentoring emerging prose writers and screenwriters within communities, schools, literary organizations and institutions for many years. She is a recipient of grants from Creative Australia, is a recipient of fellowships and residencies at Varuna and Bundanon, was the UNSW – Copyright Agency Writer-in-Residence 2018 and received The Bridge Awards’ inaugural Varuna – Cove Park Writing Residency 2019 (Scotland). She served on the Board of Writing NSW (2018-2023) and on the International Project Reference Group for the ARC-funded project ‘Connecting Asia Pacific Literary Cultures. She is the co-convenor of the Literary Provocations Hub in the School of the Arts & Media, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture at UNSW where she works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNSW.
Dr Debra Adelaide, Fiction Editor
Debra Adelaide is continuing as the Fiction Editor of Southerly. She is the author or editor of 18 books, including fiction, non-fiction, edited collections and reference works. Her 2018 novel, The Household Guide to Dying, was published to acclaim in Australia and around the world, and was short- and long-listed for several literary awards, including the former international Orange Prize, now the Women’s Prize, for fiction. Other fiction includes Letter to George Clooney (2013), which was shortlisted for the Nita B. Kibble Award, The Women’s Pages (2015), and Zebra (2019), winner of the short story category in the Queensland Literary Awards. Her most recent books are The Innocent Reader: reflections on reading & writing (2019) and Creative Writing Practice: reflections on form & process (ed with Sarah Attfield, 2021). Debra Adelaide taught creative writing for 20 years and is now an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. She lives and writes on Bidjigal country in Sydney’s inner west.
Dr Luke Johnson, Incoming Fiction Editor
Dr Luke Johnson, Incoming Fiction Editor: Luke Johnson is a writer and academic from Wollongong, NSW. He is the author of two books: the short-collection Ferocious Animals (Recent Work Press, 2021), and Kangaroo Unbound (Puncher & Wattmann, 2025) – a collection of 50-odd poems that take their titles and inspiration from legendary Australian artist Garry Shead’s ‘D.H. Lawrence’ paintings. His poems, stories, essays and criticism have appeared in such places as Griffith Review, HEAT, Island, Southerly, Overland, Westerly, The Lifted Brow, Going Down Swinging, Meniscus, TEXT, Mascara Literary Review, The Age, The Herald Sun, The Conversation and Australian Book Review, and have won or been listed for such prizes as the AAWP Chapter One Prize, the Elizabeth Jolley Award, the Josephine Ulrick Award, and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Award. He is a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Wollongong, and incoming fiction editor for Southerly – Australia’s oldest literary journal. For more information, visit www.luke-johnson.com.au.
Dr Paul Dawson, Poetry Editor
Paul Dawson’s latest collection of poetry is Lines of Desire (Puncher & Watmann, 2025). His first book, Imagining Winter (IP, 2006), won the national IP Picks Best Poetry Award. Paul has been anthologised in Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (Puncher & Wattmann, 2013) and Harbour City Poems: Sydney in Verse 1788-2008 (Puncher & Wattmann, 2009), and his poetry and short stories have appeared in top Australian literary journals such as Meanjin, Island, Overland, Southerly, Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Peril Magazine, Mascara Literary Review, and The Sleepers Almanac. Paul is also an internationally recognized scholar. He has published three academic monographs: The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel (OSU Press, 2023), The Return of the Omniscient Narrator: Authorship and Authority in Twenty-First Century Fiction (OSU Press, 2013), and Creative Writing and the New Humanities (Routledge, 2005). He teaches creative writing and literary studies in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales.
Dr Melody Ellis, Creative Nonfiction Editor
Melody Ellis is a writer and creative practice researcher interested in the politics of value and taste, language, interpretation, and subjectivity. Her work is informed by critical theory, philosophy, and art – as well as a long history of participating in grassroots artist-led collaborative projects. Melody is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University where she is currently Program Manager of the Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours) degree and is a member of the non/fictionLab research group. She is also co-convenor of the Gutter Stars comics collective.
Dr Axel-Nathaniel Rose, Southerly Blogs Editor
Axel-Nathaniel Rose is an author, editor, and academic based at UNSW Sydney. His research crosses literary studies, fan studies, queer studies, and book history. His research has appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, Transformative Works and Cultures, and Ludic Inquiries Into Power and Pedagogy in Higher Education. His short stories and poetry have been published in Unsweetened Literary Journal and Tharunka, and his novella, Stars, Hide Your Fires, will be published in a forthcoming anthology from Penguin Vintage. He is a co-opted committee member of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, and he is administrative assistant and blogs editor for Southerly.
Dr Michael Moller, Barribugu Editor (Southerly Schools Program Online)
Michael Moller has a deep commitment to Australian literature as a reader, writer and educator. His scholarly work has been published in Remote Control: New Media, New Ethics, The Journal of Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies Review, among other publications. He works as Head Teacher, English at Auburn Girls High School, leading the Faculty of English in educating the next generation of readers and writers in the analysis and interpretation of literary texts and in the creation of new work. He is passionate about the dynamic nature of Australian literature and the creative potential of young voices.
Southerly Advisory Panel
Dr Elizabeth McMahon, Outgoing Editor of Southerly
Elizabeth McMahon is a Professor in the School of the Arts and Media. Her 2016 monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (New York and London: Anthem) is the culmination of research funded by an ARC Discovery grant titled Our Island Home: The Shifting Map of Australian Literature. The monograph won the 2017 Walter McRae Russell Award for ‘the best work of literary criticism on an Australian subject published within the previous 2 calendar years’; and the inaugural (2017) Australian University Heads of English Prize for ‘best book of literary scholarship published by an Australian-based author in the previous twelve months’. Her most recent monograph, co-authored with Elaine Stratford and Godfrey Baldacchino, is titled Rethinking Island Methodologies (Rowman 2023). Professor McMahon has also published widely in Australian Literary Studies, especially on women writers and the representation of gender and sexuality. These outputs include 16 articles or book chapters, and with Dr Brigitta Olubas, three edited collections on Australian writers: Antigone Kefala (University of Western Australia Press, 2021), Elizabeth Harrower (University of Sydney Press, 2016 ) and Patrick White, (Rodopi, 2010). From 1998-2007 Professor McMahon edited Australian Humanities Review. From 2008 to 2023 she co-edited Southerly, Australia’s oldest literary journal, and from 2013 to 2023 co-edited a book series titled Rethinking the Island for Rowman and Littlefield International.
Anissa Jones, Dharug Language Advisor
Warami. Ngaya giyara Anissa. Ngaya Burubirangal Dharug Dhiyin. Ngaya Marrangurrabirang. Bayady’u Dharug Dhalang, dhalang Warrangin.
“Hello. My name is Anissa. I am a Burubirangal Dharug woman from Marrangurra (Richmond). I speak the Dharug tongue, the language of Warrang (Sydney).”
Anissa Jones has taught in schools (P-12) and vocational institutions for over 20 years and is now working at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) as the Indigenous Academic Specialist for the Arts, Design and Architecture faculties, embedding Aboriginal Perspectives in Curriculum. She completed the Master of Indigenous Languages (MILE) course in 2022 and teaches Dharug Dhalang to her Community.
Lena Nahlous
Lena Nahlous is an experienced CEO, producer, curator, artistic director and facilitator with a long-term commitment to racial equity in the arts, screen and creative sectors. She is currently the CEO of Diversity Arts Australia and host of The Colour Cycle podcast. Lena has over 20 years-experience in arts, cultural and media organisations where she has had a focus on developing arts initiatives for socially excluded artists, with a focus on creatives from culturally and racially marginalised backgrounds and young people. Lena’s recent achievements include receiving a Churchill Fellowship in 2023 and the NSW Premier’s Arts and Culture Medal in 2024. She received the Western Sydney Woman Leader of Change Award in 2020. In her former role as Executive Director of Arts and Cultural Exchange, Lena established initiatives like the Arab Film Festival, Switch digital arts centre and Artfiles, an artist employment and engagement program. Lena’s recent projects include: the Shifting the Balance leadership report; the Creative Equity Toolkit; the Fair Play capacity building program, and I am Not a Virus Australia.
Rhiannon Hall
Rhiannon Hall has been sharing her love of writing with high school students for over ten years. She works as a high school teacher in South-West Sydney. She has published poems in Burrow, Cordite Poetry Review, Meniscus, Tarot, and an essay in Axon: Creative Explorations. She is a Doctor of Creative Arts candidate at Western Sydney University, where she is exploring how authentic-sounding youth voices are represented through the form of young adult verse novels.
Dr Ben Etherington
Ben Etherington is an associate professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a member of the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Broadly, he works in postcolonial and world literary studies; his areas of specialisation are primitivism in literature and theory, and Caribbean poetry and poetics. He is the author of Literary Primitivism, the winner of the Australian University Heads of English prize for literary scholarship, and The Cambridge Companion to World Literature. He has recently held fellowships at Columbia University, the University of Birmingham, and the Eccles Centre at the British Library. He is currently the Chief Investigator of the ARC Discovery Project, ‘Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation’, for which he is working with the Sydney-based Jamaican novelist Sienna Brown, and he will commence as an ARC Future Fellow in 2026.
Dr Helen Groth
Professor Helen Groth is an expert on the history of literature, with particular expertise in nineteenth-century literature, literary sound studies, and literature & photography. Her current book projects explore aspects of literature’s enduring engagement with riotous activity. Her monograph Riotous Lives and Literary Writing is in progress and a recently published co-edited collection Writing the Global Riot. Literature in a Time of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2023) draws together scholars from across the globe to consider the various ways writers over time have shaped cultural perceptions of the riot as a distinctive form of political and social expression.
Dr Fiona Morrison
Associate Professor Fiona Morrison teaches and supervises in the areas of postcolonial and world literatures, Australian literature and women’s writing. Her most recent book is Christina Stead and the Matter of America (2019), and she is currently working on two projects: a book-length study of Henry Handel Richardson, and an edited volume of scholarly essays on Eleanor Dark: Time, Tide and History: Selected Essays on Eleanor Dark (forthcoming SUP).
Dr Brigitta Olubas
Brigitta Olubas is Professor of English. Her principal research areas include: Australian Literature and transnational writing, Australian modernity, literary and visual culture studies, gender studies and narrative ethics. Her most recent work, Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life (US: Farrar, Straus & Giroux; UK: Virago; Australia: Hachette) was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2023.